Re: backup strategy - followup

[LEO]

> From: Jon Gardner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: "retro-talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 12:21:08 -0500
> To: retro-talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: backup strategy - followup
> 
>> FTP:ing stuff off-site seems little overkill for us, but if the VXA we
>> bought was shipped with an autoloader I wouldn't look in to getting a
>> tapedrive with an autoloader...!
>> 
>> Actually, I don't like backups that are so much human dependent as the one
>> we use. Changing tapes daily can't be scripted and that's why it sucks... ;-)

Hi,

Why don't you like the auto-loader? We have about 160gb data that requires
to be backed up every friday night UNATTENDED, so the autoloader was the way
to go for us, but other than that why don't you like the autoloaders?

Thks
Leo



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Re: backup strategy - followup

[Jon Gardner]

on 9/14/2000 8:49 AM, jakob krabbe at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>> We use a 13-tape rotation. We swap tapes during the day on Monday, full
>> (recycle) backup on Monday night, normal backups Tue-Sat nights. In
>> addition, we have an FTP server offsite with one FTP backup set on it. Every
>> two weeks we do a recycle backup to it over the weekend (takes anywhere from
>> 24-36 hours, typically) with normal backups every evening.
> 
> Seems like you're a step ahead of us...
> 
> Exactley how much data are we refering to here? What bussines are you in,
> and what type of tapes are we takling about?
>
> We're an advertisement agency, backing up clients only (at the moment we
> have no server) and approximatley 20 - 30 GB as total... Gee, I have no clue!

We have a similar amount of data. A full backup plus a week's worth of
partials fits on a single VXA tape with room to spare (so far, anyway).

> FTP:ing stuff off-site seems little overkill for us, but if the VXA we
> bought was shipped with an autoloader I wouldn't look in to getting a
> tapedrive with an autoloader...!
> 
> Actually, I don't like backups that are so much human dependent as the one
> we use. Changing tapes daily can't be scripted and that's why it sucks... ;-)

Exactly, which is why we went to the VXA from our DDS-3. It all needs to fit
on one tape in order to be easy. You don't have to FTP offsite necessarily;
if you have another building, or even just a server on the other side of the
same building, that will get you a little more security. The farther the
physical separation, the better.

<><
Jon L. Gardner '89, Computer Systems Manager 
Texas A&M University Dept. of Food Services 
Tel 979.458.1839 * Fax 979.845.2157 * Hip 979.229.4323
PGP public key available at 





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Re: backup strategy - followup

[Julia Frizzell]

At 4:00 PM +0200 9/14/00, jakob krabbe wrote:
>  >As it stands right now, we've just made a complete switch to new
>>tapes for the Monday-Thursday backups, and we started this with new
>>tapes in March. I should also mention that we only backup a user's
>>Documents folder, and they are instructed to put anything
>>work-related that needs to be saved in there. We also do the
>>bookmarks.html file. Everything else is (mostly) standard for
>>applications, so if there is a problem, we can restore a user
>>relatively easily.
>
>So you don't have a server to put all you work on as well?

Actually, we do, and those are part of the normal backup. However, 
it's just really starting to come into more use...when I got here 
(Feb. 99), hardly anyone was using it.

>We backup *everything* on every mac client. PC's are just selected folders.
>(Gee I think windows is such a crappy OS, still it's the only OS I've used
>for the past three years!)

We have so few Windows boxen here that there isn't much to backup on 
them. They are mostly servers, and we specify which specific folders 
are backed up on those.

>I have found out that microsoft outlook on macs are extremely hd comsuming
>since all attatchments that are sendt nad recived are saved in one giant
>file! We oftten send xAds to news magazines and that mail-file alone can
>easily take up a couple of gigs of our backup...

Brown uses Eudora as its standard email program, so we just store the 
Eudora Folder (not the app folder) in the user's documents folder.

And we also highly encourage our users to delete attachments regularly.

And lastly, I've excluded any file ending in .mp3 from *all* of our backups. ;)

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Julia Frizzell
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.netspace.org/~glyneth
http://www.theblackroad.org
"Insert pithy quote here."


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Re: backup strategy - followup

[jakob krabbe]

>As it stands right now, we've just made a complete switch to new 
>tapes for the Monday-Thursday backups, and we started this with new 
>tapes in March. I should also mention that we only backup a user's 
>Documents folder, and they are instructed to put anything 
>work-related that needs to be saved in there. We also do the 
>bookmarks.html file. Everything else is (mostly) standard for 
>applications, so if there is a problem, we can restore a user 
>relatively easily.

So you don't have a server to put all you work on as well?

We backup *everything* on every mac client. PC's are just selected folders.
(Gee I think windows is such a crappy OS, still it's the only OS I've used
for the past three years!)

I have found out that microsoft outlook on macs are extremely hd comsuming
since all attatchments that are sendt nad recived are saved in one giant
file! We oftten send xAds to news magazines and that mail-file alone can
easily take up a couple of gigs of our backup...

thanx,

/ jakob


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Re: backup strategy - followup

[jakob krabbe]

>We use a 13-tape rotation. We swap tapes during the day on Monday, full
>(recycle) backup on Monday night, normal backups Tue-Sat nights. In
>addition, we have an FTP server offsite with one FTP backup set on it. Every
>two weeks we do a recycle backup to it over the weekend (takes anywhere from
>24-36 hours, typically) with normal backups every evening.

Seems like you're a step ahead of us...

Exactley how much data are we refering to here? What bussines are you in,
and what type of tapes are we takling about?

We're an advertisement agency, backing up clients only (at the moment we
have no server) and approximatley 20 - 30 GB as total... Gee, I have no clue!


FTP:ing stuff off-site seems little overkill for us, but if the VXA we
bought was shipped with an autoloader I wouldn't look in to getting a
tapedrive with an autoloader...!

Actually, I don't like backups that are so much human dependent as the one
we use. Changing tapes daily can't be scripted and that's why it sucks... ;-)

thanx,

/ jakob


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Re: backup strategy - followup

[Julia Frizzell]

At 2:57 PM +0200 9/14/00, jakob krabbe wrote:
>  >That is what I do. I have a "laptop backup" tape that runs off a
>>backup server from 9:00 to 3:00, then at 3:00 I switch to my nightly
>>backup tape (changes depending on the night, and the week).
>
>Sounds reasonable. I think I'll tune in my server clock to someting similar.
>
>>And yes, if you're backing up everything to one tape, and recycling
>>it, then you are erasing what the server did during the day.
>
>Just checking, reverse is not true? My overnight backup is not overwritten
>during the day...?

It all depends on what type of backup you're doing.

A Normal Backup appends to new data to the tape.

A Recycle Backup erases the tape and starts over.

A New Media Backup makes a new backup set on new media.

[good descriptions are on page 60-61 of the copy of the manual I 
have, which I think was 4.2]

>Also, which tape of the week do you save? I have two "monday tapes" that I
>cyckle and I'm planning to increase that to four tapes... I'm still in
>backup-tune-in-mode and I have a feeling mondays are not the best days...??
>
>What day works best for you?

Well, I inherited the backup system from my predecessor, and I will 
probably change it if we get our funding grant renewed in December. 
What we do currently is this:

Week 1 - Normal backup, Monday through Thursday, on a tape for each 
day. On Friday we do a recycle backup that copies everything.

Week 2 - same as Week 1, with a different set of tapes.

Weekends currently do a full server backup to hard drives. This is 
one of the things we'll change with the refunding...getting an 
autoloader or something to do the server backup/tape change on the 
weekends.

We also use a separate tape for laptop backups during the day (as 
mentioned earlier).

As it stands right now, we've just made a complete switch to new 
tapes for the Monday-Thursday backups, and we started this with new 
tapes in March. I should also mention that we only backup a user's 
Documents folder, and they are instructed to put anything 
work-related that needs to be saved in there. We also do the 
bookmarks.html file. Everything else is (mostly) standard for 
applications, so if there is a problem, we can restore a user 
relatively easily.

-- 
---
Julia Frizzell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.netspace.org/~glyneth
http://www.theblackroad.org
"Insert pithy quote here."


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Re: backup strategy - followup

[Jon Gardner]

on 9/14/2000 7:57 AM, jakob krabbe at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Also, which tape of the week do you save? I have two "monday tapes" that I
> cyckle and I'm planning to increase that to four tapes... I'm still in
> backup-tune-in-mode and I have a feeling mondays are not the best days...??
> 
> What day works best for you?

We use a 13-tape rotation. We swap tapes during the day on Monday, full
(recycle) backup on Monday night, normal backups Tue-Sat nights. In
addition, we have an FTP server offsite with one FTP backup set on it. Every
two weeks we do a recycle backup to it over the weekend (takes anywhere from
24-36 hours, typically) with normal backups every evening.

<><
Jon L. Gardner '89, Computer Systems Manager 
Texas A&M University Dept. of Food Services 
Tel 979.458.1839 * Fax 979.845.2157 * Hip 979.229.4323
PGP public key available at 





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Re: backup strategy - followup

[jakob krabbe]

>That is what I do. I have a "laptop backup" tape that runs off a 
>backup server from 9:00 to 3:00, then at 3:00 I switch to my nightly 
>backup tape (changes depending on the night, and the week).

Sounds reasonable. I think I'll tune in my server clock to someting similar.

>And yes, if you're backing up everything to one tape, and recycling 
>it, then you are erasing what the server did during the day.

Just checking, reverse is not true? My overnight backup is not overwritten
during the day...?

Also, which tape of the week do you save? I have two "monday tapes" that I
cyckle and I'm planning to increase that to four tapes... I'm still in
backup-tune-in-mode and I have a feeling mondays are not the best days...??

What day works best for you?

thanx,

/ jakob


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Re: backup strategy - followup

[Julia Frizzell]

At 9:53 AM +0200 9/14/00, jakob krabbe wrote:
>Discussed on this list earlier:
>
>Run retrospect server on portables during day and stationaries dyring night
>where backup source = VXA.
>
>---
>
>If I change tape in the morning, doesn't the recykled nigh backup overwrite
>the portables!?
>
>Maybe I'm better off changing the tape at night after the portables have
>been backed up but before the nighshift starts?

That is what I do. I have a "laptop backup" tape that runs off a 
backup server from 9:00 to 3:00, then at 3:00 I switch to my nightly 
backup tape (changes depending on the night, and the week).

And yes, if you're backing up everything to one tape, and recycling 
it, then you are erasing what the server did during the day.

--
Julia Frizzell
User Consultant/Analyst
The Education Alliance
Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University
222 Richmond Street, Suite 300
Providence, Rhode Island  02903-4226
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
401.274.9548 x311 or 800.521.9550 x311
401.421.7650 (fax)
http://www.lab.brown.edu


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Re: backup strategy

[Pam Lefkowitz]

>Maybe I don't need five storagesets? I've read somewhere one will do... I
>use VXA 170 meter tapes. What am I missing??
>
>thanx,
>
>/ jakob
>

Jacob,

First I want to suggest that a lot of your frustration can be diminished 
by having another go at reading the manual cover to cover (personally, I 
did it with highlighter and sticky notes in hand). I'd be willing to bet 
this will reduce your frustration level. This manual is not just an 
educational experience...it's an adventure. These guys are just warped 
enough...er, have a wry enough sense of humor to make the manual a 
not-so-dry read. It speaks to the end-user, rather than to the engineers. 
:-)

That said, in order to decide how to best design your backup strategy, 
you will want to decide a few things:
1) the purpose for backing up
2) how much data can you afford to lose
3) how much change in data occurs each day/week/period
4) how many times per week/month can you rotate backup sets offsite
5) your budget for tapes (taking into account how much your budget would 
be effected to completely rebuild a system from scratch vs restoring from 
backup)
6) can/will any data be archived off the client workstations periodically 
(for instance, archiving a completed project for posterity) to CD.

Once you've figured out your purpose in backing up and decided how much 
data you can afford to lose, then you can sit down with a calendar and 
decide how to design your strategy. I've found that the examples in the 
manual are perfect for most situations. One of the strategies may be 
right for you.

We can't really tell you how many tapes to buy or how to design your 
system. What we can do is tell you what's been successful for us. For my 
clients I've found it best to run one full backup before making any final 
decisions. This gives me a starting point. Once I know how much initial 
tape space will be taken up, I can work from there on a tape budget. It 
will also give me a good idea of how long a full backup will take. 
Remember that because of the way Retrospect handles duplicates, you 
shouldn't need as many tapes or as much time as you may initially think. 
One full run on a fresh tape(s) will help you to gauge your needs better.

IMO, backing up is more than "how many tapes do I need to buy to fit all 
my data on a full backup". It is a strategy. 

Hope this helps,

Pam

Pam Lefkowitz, President Consulting
Core Computing Technologies, Inc. Disaster Recovery
848 Dodge Ave., Suite 254Network Management
Evanston, IL 60202   Project Management
voice:847/675-3513Solutions
fax: 847/675-3564  Training
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Service
http://www.corecomputing.com

Apple Product Professional
Member, Apple Solution Experts
Certified Dantz Development Partner
Certified Female Business Enterprise - City of Chicago
Certified Female Business Enterprise - Cook County
Certified Female Business Enterprise - State of Illinois
Approved Vendor - Chicago Public Schools 





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Re: backup strategy

[Jon Gardner]

on 8/15/2000 7:44 AM, jakob krabbe at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Maybe I don't need five storagesets? I've read somewhere one will do... I
> use VXA 170 meter tapes. What am I missing??

How much data are you backing up? We use one VXA tape per week. A new tape
goes in on Monday, "Recycle" backup on Monday night, and "Normal" backups
Tuesday through Saturday nights. We give the tape drive Sunday off. ;)

<><
Jon L. Gardner '89, Computer Systems Manager 
Texas A&M University Dept. of Food Services 
Tel 979.458.1839 * Fax 979.845.2157 * Hip 979.229.4323
PGP public key available at 





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RE: backup strategy

[Craig Isaacs]

> I want to have five tapes named mon - fri and overwriting any information
> each night. Can someone please give me a hint of the settings in
> Retrospect.

Launch Retrospect
Automate>Scripts
New
Pick "Backup"
Call the script "Daily"
Click Sources and set your sources
Click Destinations and add your 5 sets (Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri)
Selecting: All Files except cache files
Schedule:Add:Day of Week (OK)
Put a check box on "Monday",
   make Action "Recycle"
   (or Full if you have an older version of Retro)
   set To: to Mon
Repeat for each day of the week.

Having said that, why not just do recycle backups every 3rd of 4th week
rather than recycling every week? To do this, you would set the action to
"Normal" and then do another schedule for each day with a "Weeks" interval
of 3 or 4.

Also, this is the type of thing you should feel free to email directly to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Craig



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RE: Backup Strategy

[Jaeger, Luke]

yes, buy a tape drive. It will pay for itself very quickly. 

Say the following words to your boss:

"Sooner or later there WILL be a catastrophic computer failure resulting in
data loss.
You can either spend a small amount of money on a backup tape drive, or a
large amount of money rebuilding the lost data by hand"

(Didn't you always secretly wish to be an insurance salesman?)


top of the world,

Luke Jaeger, Technology Coordinator
Disney Magazine Publishing
Northampton, Massachusetts
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Any opinions expressed in this message are my own and may not represent the
opinions of Disney Publishing, etc etc etc.

*

> --
> From: Jeff Shamburg
> Reply To: retro-talk
> Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2000 12:18 PM
> To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  Backup Strategy
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I recently downloaded the Retrospect Express Trial, I'm attempting to work
> Retrospect Express into our backup strategy.  Before we purchase the full
> version of this software, I'd like to get this problem straightened out.
> We
> currently have approx. 7.1 GB of information that our company has stored
> on
> our server.  Most of this data is latent, and changed about once a month,
> but there is about 2 GB of it that is accessed daily and about 1/4 of that
> 2
> GB is changed daily.  Our server currently has a CD-RW drive that we use
> once a week to backup our active information, and we backup the rest about
> once a month.
> 
> Using Dantz's product, we would like to increase the frequency of our
> backups of our active information to a daily backup.  This seems possible
> with the incremental backup function of the product, but there simply
> isn't
> enough room on one CD for our backups.  What do we need to do to make
> daily
> backups a reality?  Do we need to bite the bullet and buy a tape drive, or
> can we make a CD backup work?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> --
> Jeff Shamburg
> Network Administrator, Draftsman
> Central Plains Engineering & Environmental Consultants, Inc.
> http://www.cplainseng.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 


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RE: Backup Strategy

[brian9549]

If you are going to be backing up that much data on a daily basis
and do not want to have to worry about CD-R/W swapping then a
tape drive would be the way to go. Know that REx only supports
ATAPI tape drives.

Brian


--- Original Message ---
"Jeff Shamburg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Wrote on 
Wed, 12 Jul 2000 11:18:54 -0500
 -- 
Hi,

I recently downloaded the Retrospect Express Trial, I'm attempting
to work
Retrospect Express into our backup strategy.  Before we purchase
the full
version of this software, I'd like to get this problem straightened
out.  We
currently have approx. 7.1 GB of information that our company
has stored on
our server.  Most of this data is latent, and changed about once
a month,
but there is about 2 GB of it that is accessed daily and about
1/4 of that 2
GB is changed daily.  Our server currently has a CD-RW drive
that we use
once a week to backup our active information, and we backup the
rest about
once a month.

Using Dantz's product, we would like to increase the frequency
of our
backups of our active information to a daily backup.  This seems
possible
with the incremental backup function of the product, but there
simply isn't
enough room on one CD for our backups.  What do we need to do
to make daily
backups a reality?  Do we need to bite the bullet and buy a tape
drive, or
can we make a CD backup work?

Thanks in advance.

--
Jeff Shamburg
Network Administrator, Draftsman
Central Plains Engineering & Environmental Consultants, Inc.
http://www.cplainseng.com





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